Industry Gifts to Physicians

NEW YORK, March 20 -- Minnesota and Vermont require pharmaceutical companies to disclose payments of $100 or more to physicians and other health care providers, but both states have been accused of failing to deliver on that promise of transparency.
The two states are not living up to their pledges to make it clear to patients whether pharmaceutical company largess and gifts of various kinds might be influencing physicians unduly in the choice of drugs they prescribe, said geriatrician Joseph S. Ross, M.D., M.H.S., of Mount Sinai Medical School, in the March 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"The Vermont and Minnesota laws requiring disclosure of payments do not provide easy access to payment information for the public and are of limited quality once accessed," wrote Dr. Ross. "However, substantial numbers of payments of $100 or more were made to physicians by pharmaceutical companies."
Dr. Ross expanded on the thrust of his JAMA paper in an interview. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) provided a statement of response attributable to Ken Johnson, the senior vice president.